I bet you never read these terms together in a headline! Well, I got into dot-connecting mode while reviewing these different topics, by happenstance all within one morning:

– In my film, we discuss “tyranny of the minority” because many medical biofilms are controlled or “anchored” by a small number of bugs (often bacteria and fungi species). When you knock these out, the biofilm infection clears more quickly with the proper therapeutics. See more on this topic in my interview with Dr. Randy Wolcott, woundcare expert and biofilm therapeutics innovator.

– In China, app. 100,000 paid censors strictly control the ebb & flow of incendiary topics on the internet. In a country of 1.4 billion people (600M users) with more Netizens born every day, this is no small feat. This governmental control has many facets, some of which exhibits behavior that can be likened to a biological organism. The article in the Economist (A Giant Cage) calls one of these instruments of control “adaptive authoritarianism. “

– We the people who like the notion of smaller, efficient government were recently horrified to hear about Obama’s latest authoritarian overreach – a program to create tens of thousands of new jobs for “healthcare navigators.” The number of 100,000 new jobs was rumored (there’s that big magic number again). These new jobs are proposed to help patients navigate the new byzantine healthcare system that is evolving in complexity every day. It is noteworthy that already, CPAs are forced to check a compliance box on their clients’ tax forms to confirm or deny their tax client’s healthcare insurance. This quick check enables to IRS to debit monies more expediently from the client’s bank account.

Biofilms are the predominant life form on this planet. The pathogenic ones that cause chronic disease in humans are (usually) controlled by a small number of anchor species. In China, the adaptive tyranny of the Chinese government controls the censors who keep democracy and protests at bay. In America, the unabashed overreach of the executive office reaches into the lives and wallets of all Americans.

Is this too much of a cerebral stretch? I don’t think so. Microbes arrived here 3.2 billion years ago, but we appear to have some rather striking similarities in adaptive behaviors. Maybe the fact that there are 100,000,000,000,000 of these ancient lifeforms inside of us explains the controlling aspects of these behaviors?